The Safari lay awake waiting for the alarm clock to go off
listening to the dawn chorus which is getting louder and more impressive every
day now; no summer migrants yet though.
We reckon it’s the best its been for a coupla three years or
more– despite the recent ravages of garden habitat locally during the last two
or three summers – no ‘Silent Spring’ here thankfully. The Song Thrush could be
heard from the Golden Triangle which was good as we’ve not heard him for a few
days or more.
We didn’t get far on Patch 1 for the usual upside down dog
reason; only far enough to watch the Goldfinches leaving their roost in a
neighbours Holly tree.
Patch 2 gave us a hazy couple of hundred Common Scoters and
two Red Throated Divers. A Skylark (P2 #51) calling unseen overhead was
a useful addition to the patch total
The morning was taken up with a very excited school group
who found just about everything on offer between them. Namely...
Molluscs
Sea slug eggs- looked like a soft spotty horseshoe
Common Periwinkle
Common Whelk
Edible Mussel
Thin Tellin
Baltic Tellin
Bean-like Tellin
Iceland
Cyprine – one of the worlds longest lived animals
Common Otter shell
Common Cockle
Prickly Cockle
Striped Venus shell
Rayed Trough shell
Banded Wedge shell – very important for the 10,000+ Common
Scoter ducks that spend the winter just offshore
Common Razor
Pod Razor
Curved Razor – quite a good number of these which are not
often found, perhaps because it has been so calm recently and they normally get
broken up, being very fragile, in rougher weather.
Worms
Honeycomb Worm – stuck to the seawall, a nationally scarce
animal
Spirorbis spirorbis tubeworm – inside an old pod razor shell
Pomatoceros triqueter
(?) tubeworm – inside an old pod razor shell
Sand Mason worm – only empty cases of silk stuck with grains
of sand and bits of shell
Arthropods
Acorn Barnacles – not ID’d to species level for Year 2
children!
Green Shore Crab
Common Prawn – but no Brown Shrimps for comparison
Bryozoans
Horn Wrack – looks like pale brown seaweed but is actually a
colony of thousands of tiny animals a bit like coral
Sea urchins
Sea Potato
Fish
Common Blenny
Sea weeds
Gut Weed
Sea Lettuce
Purple Laver
Spiral Wrack
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| Edible Whelk - no one home! |
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| Green Shore Crab |
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| Green Shore Crab |
After they’d been the tide came in an erased all trace of
their presence. With the tide we had two Guillemots both still in winter
plumage and the same Common Scoters were out in the haze.
The children had their lunch our gardens and while they were out there we saw they were making Daisy Chains and 'admiring' (=picking!) our Coltsfoot.
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| Daisy - from Day's eye; so called cos the flower follows the sun from east to west during the day |
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| Coltsfoot - so called because the leaves are hoof shaped |
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| Also known as Son before fathers as the leaves appear after the flowers |
Where to next? More of the same without the gang!
In the meantime let us know who's been ransacking your outback
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